Earthquake felt at Olympic venues

4.5 quake hits 42 miles northeast of Athens, beneath Aegean Sea

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updated 5:35 p.m. ET Aug. 24, 2004

ATHENS, Greece - A small earthquake rattled some Olympic venues Tuesday. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute said the tremor had a preliminary magnitude of 4.5 and occurred at 3:38 p.m. local time. It was centered about 42 miles northeast of Athens, 12 miles beneath the Aegean Sea.

“There is no reason to panic. It was a very small quake,” said Giorgos Stavrakakis, a seismologist with the Geodynamic Institute.

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The press table shook at the baseball venue at the Helliniko Complex near the coastline.

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“Like somebody was pounding the keyboard too hard,” one reporter said. Other said they didn’t notice anything.

Venues including the Olympic Village and the 9,000-seat Ano Liossia Olympic Hall for wrestling and judo were built near the fault line and designed to withstand a potentially massive quake.

International Olympic Committee took the unprecedented step of buying insurance in case the games were called off due to terrorism or natural disasters, such as earthquakes.

Earthquakes are common in Greece, one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

In 1999, a 5.9-magnitude quake near Athens killed 143 people, injured about 2,000 and left thousands more homeless.

An earthquake also hit Nagano, Japan, during the 1998 Winter Games, jolting athletes and spectators but causing no major damage.